DOES THE DNC NOT GET THAT THE REST OF THE COUNTRY IS DAMN SICK OF BEING IGNORED WHILE MONTHS ARE SPENT IN IOWA AND NEW HAMPSHIRE -- NEITHER OF WHICH CAN CLAIM TO BE THE FIRST STATE IN THE UNION SO THEY'RE GETTING TO HOLD THE FIRST PRIMARIES EACH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION YEAR CAN'T EVEN BE JUSTIFIED ON THOSE GROUNDS.

THE SYSTEM IS SCREWED AND VOTERS AROUND THE COUNTRY ARE SCREWED OVER. IF THE DNC WANTS TO INJECT THEMSELVES INTO STATE PRIMARY DEADLINES THEY SHOULD IMMEDIATELY FIX THE BROKEN SYSTEM THAT REWARDS A HANDFUL OF PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN TWO STATES WITH VERY SMALL POPULATIONS.

THE DNC SHOULD USE THIS DISCUSSION TO ANNOUNCE THAT THEY WILL ROTATE THE PRIMARIES THE WAY THE OLYMPICS ARE ROTATED. BUT DON'T EXPECT TO SEE THAT.

THE DNC IS SO SCREWED UP RIGHT NOW THAT HOWARD DEAN'S CRY OF RUN IN EVERY STATE HAS NOW MUTED INTO, "FLORIDA, DO WHAT WE SAY OR NONE OF YOUR CITIZENS' VOTES WILL COUNT."

FLORIDA SHOULD MOVE UP THEIR PRIMARY AND IF THE DNC WANTS TO THREATEN ONE OF THE LARGEST STATES IN THE NATION WITH DISENFRANCHISEMENT, YOU BETTER BELIEVE FLORIDA WILL GO REPUBLICAN IN 2008 WITHOUT THE G.O.P. HAVING TO BREAK ANY LAWS. AND, SOMETHING TO KEEP IN MIND, FLORIDA HAS MORE VOTES IN THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE THAN DOES IOWA.

Starting with war resistance. This week's NOW with David Brancaccio (PBS, begins airing in most markets Friday nights) takes a look at war resistance:

Choosing to go to war is both a government's decision and one made by individual enlistees. But changing your mind once you're in the army is a risky decision with serious consequences. On Friday, August 24 (checkyour local listings), we talk to two soldiers who went AWOL and eventually left the Army, but who took very different paths. NOW captures the moment when one man turns himself in, and when another applies for refugee status in Canada, becoming one of the 20,000 soldiers who have deserted the army since the War in Iraq began. Each describes what drove him to follow his conscience over his call to duty, and what penalties and criticism were endured as a result. "I see things differently having lived through the experience," former army medic Agustin Aguayo tells NOW. "When I returned from Iraq, after much reflection I knew deep within me I could never go back."The NOW website at www.pbs.org/now will offer more insight into the case made by conscientious objectors, as well as more stories of desertion in the ranks.In addition to the broadcast, a preview of the show is posted at YouTube. And the show will be available in various forms (audio, video, text -- though maybe not in full) at the NOW with David Brancaccio site.

Camilo Mejia is the new chair of Iraq Veterans Against the War. The decision of the new board members of IVAW were made last weekend. Tony Pecinovsky (People's Weekly World) reports on the Veterans for Peace conference and quotes Mejia explaining, "There is no greater argument against war than the experience of war itself. In the military you're not free to decide for yourself what is right and wrong. The fog of war is very real. Your main concern is staying alive" and explaining his decision to self-checkout, "I couldn't return knowing that we are committing war crimes. This war is criminal. But I'm no longer a prisoner of fear. I have hope that we can end this war." IVAW is gearing up for their big Truth in Recruting campaign. Adam Kokesh, who is co-chair of IVAW, is currently doing workshops (tonight at St. Bede's at the corner of St. Francis and San Mateo 7-9 pm PST). And Camilo Mejia tells his story in his own story of resistance in his new book Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia.

Turning to the jibber-jabber. The NIE was released yesterday. It is a much kinder and less explicit version of Peter W. Galbraith's "Iraq: The Way to Go" (The New York Review of Books, August 16, 2007). In the essay, Galbraith writes, "The Iraq war is lost. Of course, neither the President nor the war's intellectual architects are prepared to admit this. Nonetheless, the specter of defeat shapes their thinking in telling ways. The case for the war is no longer defined by the benefits of winning -- a stable Iraq, democracy on the march in the Middle East, the collapse of the evil Iranian and Syrian regimes -- but by the consequences of defeat." If that stance is still not clear, Alex Spillius (Telegraph of London) reports: "Frontline generals in Iraq spoke openly yesterday of the need to have a government that could function and guarantee security above all else, including democratic legitimacy. Brig Gen John Bednarek, who commands forces in Diyala province, told CNN that 'democratic institutions are not necessarily the way ahead in the long-term future'." As all the lies are dropped, the reality of the crimes being committed may be grasped. Maybe not.

Michael Ware and Thomas Evans (CNN) report that "officials now say they are willing to settle for a government that functions and can bring security." Yesterday, White House flack Gordon Johndroe declared (in Crawford, TX) that "we know that there are significant challenges ahead, especially in the political area. I would say that the strategy laid out by the President on January 10th was a strategy that provided for security first, so that there would be space for political reconciliation. The surge did not get fully operational until mid-summer. It is not surprising -- it is frustrating, but it's not surprising that the political reconciliation is lagging behind the security improvements. I think that is the way the strategy was laid out." The 'improved' security is a lie. Repeating, Leila Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) reporting earlier this month that the US military claims of 'progress' were based on numbers they would not release and that McClatchy Newspapers' figures do not track with the findings the US military has trumpeted: "U.S. officials say the number of civilian casualties in the Iraqi capital is down 50 percent. But U.S. officials declined to provide specific numbers, and statistics gathered by McClatchy Newspapers don't support the claim." But clearly the generals, the officials and the White House are all on the same page regarding the 'problems' with democracy -- pure chance, of course.

Greg Miller (Los Angeles Times) summarizes the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE): "Despite some military progress, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is unable to govern his country effecitvely and the political situation is likely to become even more precarious in the next six to 12 months, the nation's intelligence agencies concluded in a new assessment released Thursday. The document, an update of a National Intelligence Estimate delivered in January, represents the view of all 16 U.S. spy agencies."

'Democracy' on hold or out the window . . . what to do, what to do? Bring in a 'strong man' dictator? Reuters reports that 3 "secularist ministers . . . will formally quit" the cabinet of Nour al-Maliki today and that three are from Iyad Allawi's party. Yesterday Democracy Now! noted Allawyi is working with "Republican lobbying firm Barbour, Griffith, and Rogers" in an effort to become the new prime minister of Iraq (Allawi was previously interim prime minister). CIA asset Allawi was still working with the CIA in 2003, as Jim Lobe (Foreign Policy in Focus) noted, in attempted "Iraqification" which was a popular thing in late 2003 as the White House and hand maidens of the press attempted to treat "Iraqification" as a process which would put Iraqis in control. The policy was at odds with much of the White House's aims and never got off the ground. Had it, it still wouldn't have allowed for Iraqi control. Allawi was interim Prime Minister following the start of the illegal war and, during that time, he made his 'mark' early on. Paul McGeough (Sydney Morning Herald via Common Dreams, July 2004) reported in July 2004: "Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings. They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security center, in the city's south-western suburbs."

Never having been handed democracy, Iraqis now face the very likely prospect that the puppet (al-Maliki) will be replaced with a dictator/strong man. It's not about what the Iraqis want or desire on the US government's end, it's just more of the same. A point driven home by the announcement that Abdel-Salam Aref has died in Jordan. In 2004, Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) explained, "The US-installed regime in Iraq said last night it would pay a monthly pension to a former president overthrown more than 35 years ago in a coup that brought Saddam Hussein's Baath party to power. The Iraqi Governing Council says it will pay Abdel-Rahman Aref $1,000 a month and allocate $5,000 to cover his medical bills in Jordan. Aref rose to prominence in 1963 when he was appointed army chief of staff by his elder brother, then President Abdel-Salam Aref. He was overthrown in July of 1968 in a coup that was aided by the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA also gave the Baath Party the names of some 5,000 Iraqi Communists who were then hunted down and killed or imprisoned. Following the coup, Baath party leader Ahmed Hasan al-Bakr became president, with Saddam as his right hand man."

Friday, August 24, 2007

BULLY BOY'S "FUN WITH HISTORY" CONTINUED TODAY AS HE TOOK SOME TIME OUT WHILE HAVING HIS HAIR COLORED TO EXPLAIN THE CIVIL WAR.

"THE UNION DID NOT GIVE IT ALL THEY GOT," SAID THE BULLY BOY FROM BENEATH HIS STANDING HAIR DRYER. "THEY FOUGHT WITH THREE HANDS TIED BEHIND THEIR BACK. IF THE UNION FORCES HAD USED THE NUCLEAR BOMB, THEY WOULD HAVE WON. AND WOULDN'T WE ALL BE HAPPY TO BE LIVING IN A COUNTRY LIKE THAT? I KNOW I WOULD. DAMN YANKEES."

WHEN THESE REPORTERS CAUGHT UP WITH WHITE HOUSE FLACK GORDON JOHNROE HE SCREAMED, "GO AWAY! PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GO AWAY!"

WHEN THESE REPORTERS PERSISTED BY ASKING, "DOES THE BULLY BOY REALIZE THAT SOME OF THOSE 'DAMN YANKEES' WOULD BE HIS OWN FAMILY? AND DOES HE REALIZE THAT A NUCLEAR BOMB USED ON THE UNITED STATES WOULD DESTROY A HUGE CHUNK OF THE TERRAIN AND LEAD TO LONG TERM DISEASES GENERATION AFTER GENERATION? AND, MOST OF ALL, DOES HE REALIZE THAT THE NUCLEAR BOMB WAS NOT INVENTED UNTIL WELL AFTER THE CIVIL WAR?"

"I DON'T KNOW WHAT HE KNOWS!" HISSED JOHNROE. "YOU TRY WORKING FOR A NUTCASE WHO THINKS HE CAN MAKE STUFF SO JUST BY SAYING IT IS!"

AMY GOODMAN: Talk first about this decision of Iraq Veterans Against the War, a group of, what, more than 500 people to actively encourage war resistance?

CAMILO MEJIA: Last count was 525 members, with new members joining every day, Amy. And the decision was made to, as an organization, support war resistance within the military as a way to undermine the war effort.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And in terms of the growth of that resistance movement over the last couple of years -- obviously since you were one of the first -- how do you see that developing?

CAMILO MEJIA: I think we've come a long way from the time when I resisted the war. Like Amy said, I was the first public combat veteran to refuse to redeploy to Iraq. Back then, when I went public with my refusal to go back to the war, we had approximately twenty-two cases of desertion in the military. And then, by the time I got out of jail, that number was 5,500. Today, it's over 10,000 people within the military who are refusing to go to the war in Iraq since the war started. And just to put it in perspective, that's almost like saying like the 101st Airborne Division was wiped out by desertion or AWOL, basically people not wanting to fight the war.

AMY GOODMAN: How many?

CAMILO MEJIA: Over 10,000 people. So that's the equivalent to an Army division.

Over the weekend, Iraq Veterans Against the War held their board elections and Mejia was elected as the new chair. On the issue of those who self-check out, Mejia noted that despite claims that the military isn't going after them, it is happening and cited Suzanne Swift as one specific example noting she is among the "cases of people who have not yet gone public and yet have been seized in their home" and that Swift was "apprehended by police without even a search warrant at her mother's house, and she had not gone public at that time. And she had refused to go back to the war, because she had been subject to military sexual assault and command rape from her leadership and being forced to go back to the war with the same unit and with the same people who had attacked her." Swift received no justice. A military white wash investigation did find 'some' validity in her recount of the ordeal she endured but instead of doing the right thing and immediately discharge with full benefits and a honorable discharge, instead of stating publicly, "This never should have happened and we apologize to Suzanne Swift and promise we are addressing this systemic issue," they refused to discharge her, they punished her and there's been no Congressional oversight despite the fact that Swift's case is not an isolated one. In September 2006, US House Rep Peter DeFazio declared that Congress would investigate the case and that he would be the one leading that. Of course, September 2006 was before the 2006 elections and the Democratically controlled Congress hasn't shown much spine since they were swept into office claiming they would end the illegal war. As Sara Rich, Swift's mother, explained of DeFazio to Jennifer Zahn Spieler (Women's eNews) in December 2006, "His office gave us a lot of red tape. And he basically laughed at our petition. I walked away feeling rather humiliated by him."

CAMILO MEJIA: Sure. Well, we are launching a number of actions that we had, and Truth in Recruiting is one of them. What we're basically going to do is we are going to continue doing what we have been doing, but we're going to up the tempo. We are going to increase the number of members who are going to go into high schools to inform young people about the reality of the military and about the reality of war. Far from telling them not to join the military, we are going to tell them, "You want to join the military, this is what could happen to you. This is what's happened to our members. This is what the contract means. This is what stop-loss is. This is what conscientious objection is," so to basically inform them and thus empower them to make an informed decision.

We are going to go into recruiters' offices, and we're going to talk to the recruiters. And this, in time, is going to -- in turn, is going to take up their time, so they're not, you know, out there basically lying to young people about, you know, the many wonderful benefits of the military, without talking about the realities of war.

And we're going to continue doing, you know, what we're doing. We're going to continue going out into recruiting events. And we just had one action, actually, at the St. Louis conference. Across the street, there was a convention, an African American expo, where they had the America's Army game, and they were basically targeting like, you know, kids as young as twelve years of age, you know, teaching them that the military is cool and the military is good for you. And, you know, about ninety of us went in there, and, you know, we had this very military-style formation. And, you know, we all sounded off, saying, you know, "War is not a game. War is not a game. War is not a game." And then we leafleted the families and the youth with our fliers, you know, that talk about the reality of being in the military, which talk about our position as veterans against the war. And this is basically what's behind this campaign and this effort, you know, to basically inform young people about the realities of the military.

In Aimme Allison and David Solnit's new book Army of None -- from Seven Stories press, available at book stores, online, and via Courage to Resist -- one of the stories they recount is a high school counselor who was happy to invite the US military on campus and thrilled to steer students to them (especially to the Coast Guard) until he was given some information that included the military contract service members sign:

Reading the language of the military enlistment contract changed Brian's mind about promoting the military option to his students. Section 9b reads, "Laws and regulations that govern military personnel may change without notice to me. Such changes may change my status, pay, allowances, benefits, and responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces REGARDLESS of the provisions of this enlistment/reenlistment document." section 10d2 reads, "I may be ordered to active duty for 24 months, and my enlistment may be extended." In other words, the military enlistment contract isn't a real contract. The military does not legally have to honor its promises to the enlistee. That was enough to change this counselor's opinion of the service" (pages 10 - 12).

It should be noted that Camilo Mejia's contract was 'extended' -- he was one of the many whom the military decided to 'stop loss' aka backdoor draft. The US military couldn't do that and US Senator Bill Nelson and elements within the military knew that (Mejia was a non-citizen, non-citizen's cannot be extended). Mejia tells his story in Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia but we should note again that he had completed his service and should have been sent home. Those who attempt to argue "You signed a contract!" have no concerns over the fact that it's a one-sided document. In Allison and Solnit's book they explore the contracts and how to convey the actual realities.

Truth in Recruting is an attempt to get those and other realities out. Adam Kokesh (Sgt. Kokesh Goes to Washington) reports on last week's Truth in Recruitng workshop in Berkeley "a sort of trial run for the format that I have created. . . . The next one for me is this Friday in Santa Fe. The Santa Fe Chapter of Veterans For Peace (especially Ken Murray) has been a great help in setting this up and promoting it." Kokesh also notes the new board members of IVAW including Mejia as chair, Kokesh as co-chiar, Phil Aliff as secretary and Margaret Stevens as treasurer and encourages everyone to check out Meeting Resistance an "incredibly powerful" documentary.

Aimee Allison and David Solnit remind, in Army Of None, that if you're handing out information about the realities of recruitment, it's a good idea to have the information in more than one language based on the diversity of the community. Juan Gonzales addressed with Mejia (on Democracy Now! today) the fact that enrollment for African-Americans in the military is declining while Latinos are now being heavily targeted. Meija noted, "Some people may have heard about the DREAM Act, through which the military hopes to recruit undocumented youth who are graduating from high school. The proposal is to serve two years in the military or go to college for two years and then get your green card, which 65,000 people who are undocumented and graduate from high school and are not eligible for financial aid from the federal government are not going to be able to go to college for two years. So, you know, this is one of the ways in which, you know, the military is targeting young immigratns, mostly Latinos, to join the military."

Turning to the Bully Boy. Yesterday he made ridiculous claims regarding Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and did so in an attempt to resell his tired but ongoing illegal war. As Jane Fonda notes in the incredible documentary Sir! No Sir!, "You know, people say, 'Well you keep going back, why are you going back to Vietnam?' We keep going back to Vietnam because I'll tell you what, the other side does. They're always going back. And they have to go back -- the Hawks, you know, the patriarchs. They have to go back because, and they have to revise the going back, because they can't allow us to know what the back there really was." Jim Rutenberg, Sheryl Gay Stolber, Mark Mazzetti, Damien Cave and Erich Schmitt (New York Times) observe: "With his comments Mr. Bush was doing something few major politicians of either party have done in a generation: rearguing a conflict that ended more than three decades ago but has remained an emotional touch point." As Ron Jacobs (CounterPunch) observes, "Beware, this is only the beginning of a new effort to sell these wars. The next salvo will take place on September 11, 2007, when General Petraeus, the latest general to run the war in Iraq, presents his commercial for an extended surge and an increased commitment to the ongoing occupation of that country. Of course, the date has 'absolutely nothing' to do with the anniversary of the attacks in New York and Virginia six years ago."

Bully Boy made ridiculous comments about how US withdrawl from Vietnam led to a host of things when the realities are that the illegal war itself led to that. Bully Boy felt the need to speak of new vocabulary the withdrawal created (it didn't create it) and while it's nice to know he is attempting to increase his Word Power, let's explore some of the actual vocabulary that illegal war did create. "Double veteran" was someone who killed a woman after he'd had sex with her. "Expactants" was a 'cute' term for those who were 'expected' to die. "Glad bags" were body bags and "litters" were what the dead and wounded were carried on. "Willie Peter" which was white phosphorus added to napalm to prevent water from stopping the burning of skin. "Fragging" which was when those serving under an officer elected to kill him often with a grenade. "Dust offs" were when service members were medicially evacuated by helicopter. Those are only some of the words that illegal war added to the vocabularly.

Historian Douglas Brinkley tells Michael Tackett (Chicago Tribune), "If we get into a Vietnam argument, the country is divided, but if you are going to try to sell this concept that the blood is on the American people's hands because we left and were weak-kneed in Asia, that is a very tenuous and inane historical argument." Political analyst Bruce Cain tells Carolyn Tyler (KGO News) that what Bully Boy is "trying to do is use a conservative argument to rally the conservative base because what he fears is not that Nancy Pelosi and the democrats are going to vote for withdrawal. What he fears is members of his own party are going to join in." On the rollout attempt to resell the illegal war, Massimo Calabresi (Time magazine) explains, "The speech marks the start of a weeks-long campaign in the run-up to the politically charged September report card to be delivered to Congress by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Bush will give a second speech next week at the American Legion in Reno, Nevada, and another a week later on a trip to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit taking place this year in Sydney, Australia. The speeches will coincide with the launch of a $15 million ad campaign by a group called 'Freedom's Watch' -- which counts former Bush press secretary Air Fleischer as one of its founders -- aimed at bolstering flagging support for the war."

Well, you know, it reminds me very much of the way in which, of course, Richard Nixon used the threat of a bloodbath in Vietnam as the primary argument for continuing that war for four more years after he came to power in 1969. And really, it seems to me, the lesson of the Vietnam War that should be now debated and discussed is really the way in which Nixon could have ended that war when he came to power, negotiated a settlement and avoided the extension of that war into Cambodia, which happened because Nixon did not do that.

Had Nixon listened to the antiwar movement and the American people by 1969 and ended that war, there would not have been the overthrow of Norodom Sihanouk in 1970. There would not have been the extension of the war into Cambodia. There would not have been the rise of the Khmer Rouge. When Sihanouk was overthrown, we tend to forget that the Khmer Rouge was really an insignificant movement. They were about 2,500 or 3,000 very poorly armed soldiers or guerillas. And it was really the extension of the Vietnam War into Cambodia which made the Khmer Rouge the powerful movement that they were.

So really, you know, the lesson of Vietnam that we should be hearing, which we should have heard for the last three decades, but we haven't, is that government officials in the White House simply do not pay attention to the real consequences of the wars that they wage. They seem to be totally unable to take account of the destabilizing ways that the wars that they wage affect not only the country in which the war is being waged, but then the neighboring countries, as well.

Meanwhile, CBS and AP report the Bully Boy "touched a nerve among Vietnamese when he invoked the Vietnam War in a speech . . . People in Vietnam, where opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is strong, said Thursday that Mr. Bush drew the wrong conclusions from the long, bloody Southeast Asian conflict. 'Doesn't he realize that if the U.S. had stayed in Vietnam longer, they would have killed more people?' said Vu Huy Trieu of Hanoi, a veteran of the communist forces that fought American troops in Vietnam. 'Nobody regreats that the Vietnam War wasn't prolonged except Bush. . . Does he think the U.S. could have won if they had stayed longer? No way'."

Anne Zook (Peevish . . . I'm Just Saying) notes Bully Boy was "saying that we can't leave Iraq because then it would be like Vietnam. It's not like Vietnam now, you understand. We didn't charge in there uninvited and start slaughtering people right and left with no clear idea of what we were dealing with and no rational plan for how wholesale killing was going to make things better." Rebecca addressed the topic of Vietnam in "robert parry, vietnam," Mike in "Ron Fullwood, William S. Lind," Elaine in "Matthew Rothschild, John Nichols, Katha Pollitt," and Kat in "Glen Ford, Iraq, Vietnam" yesterday. Today Ira Chernus (Common Dreams) notes that the Dems are caving on Iraq and buying the myth of 'progress' so he suggests, "The alternative is to refuse to take the administration's new bait. The antiwar movement could refuse to use Iraq as a backdrop and Iraqis as extras in a drama about the trials and tribulations of America. Instead, we could insist that the issue is not about how well our soldiers are doing or what is happening here at home. It's about what is happening in Iraq, where ordinary people like us have been dying and suffering in horrifying numbers ever since we occupied their country. We have no magic button that we can push to end the tragedy now. But we can do our best to refocus the debate on the real terror: the terror endured by the Iraqi people who live under military occupation every day."

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

THESE REPORTERS HAD JUST ARRIVED IN DAMASCUS WHEN MARK TRAN OF THE GUARDIAN OF LONDON STOPPED US TO SHOUT, "YOU GUYS REALLY SCREWED UP IN IRAQ!" NOT BEING IN THE WHITE HOUSE OR IN THE COURT OF BULLY BOY WE BRISTLED EVEN MORE SO WHEN WE THOUGHT ABOUT THE "YOU".

WE CONFRONTED TRAN WHO DROPPED HIS BEER BONG AND TREMBLED. "OKAY, OKAY," HE WHIMPERED, "TONY BLAIR WAS PART OF THE WAR TOO. ENGLAND SCREWED UP TOO."

AS THE LITTLE WIMP PEED IN HIS PANTS, WE HURRIED TO THE PRESS CONFERENCE NOURI AL-MALIKI, PUPPET OF THE OCCUPATION, WAS HOLDING.

THE PUPPET MADE NOISES OF "THOSE" OUT TO GET HIM WHILE LOOKING REPEATEDLY OVER HIS SHOULDER.

AFTER THE PRESS CONFERENCE, AL-MALIKI GRANTED THESE REPORTERS A BRIEF INTERVIEW WHERE HE EXPLAINED THAT EVERYONE HAD TURNED AGAINST HIM.

"THE UNITED STATES HAS TURNED AGAINST ME," HE CONFIDED. "THE IRAQI PEOPLE HAVE TURNED AGAINST ME. THEY ALL TURN AGAINST ME. I HAVE MANY ENEMIES. THEY ARE OUT TO GET ME. BUT IT IS OKAY BECAUSE I WILL OUT SMART THEM ALL. I HAVE A PLAN . . . WHAT? WHAT!"

THESE REPORTERS HALTED THE INTERVIEW WHEN THE PUPPET BEGAN ARGUING WITH SOMEONE WE COULD NOT HEAR OR SEE. BUT, TO NO SURPRISE TO ANYONE WHO'S FOLLOWED HIS PRIME MINISTER CAREER, HE APPEARED TO BE LOSING THAT ARGUMENT AS WELL.

Deepa Fernades: Can you just talk us through that . . . Those moments of deciding? Of realizing "Okay, I really don't have any other option but the military?" What was going through your mind? Did you actually think, "This is crazy. And what am I signing up for"?Camilo Mejia: Not really because -- Well, first of all, I would disagree now days that there are no options. I think there are some options. I think we need to fight for more options. But young people really don't need to join the military to get themselves, you know, out of poverty and to get themselves educated. But that was my mentality, certainly that was my mentality when I joined the military.

An important point and one that Iraq Veterans Against the War, of which Mejia was just elected to the board (as chair), will be making with a new campaign: September 17th IVAW will kick off Truth in Recruiting. It's also a point driven home in Army of None, a new book by Aimee Allison and David Solnit -- from Seven Stories press, available at book stores, online, and via Courage to Resist where you can support both the book and a strong organization. In their book, Allison and Solnit offer an easy to comprehend and inspiring look at counter-recruiting including hands on details. Mejia was mentioning how important it is for students to know there are other opportunities besides the military and the authors Allison and Solnit stress that in their book, the need to provide more "information on job-training programs, college financial aid, and youth service projects." There are other opportunities -- however, the US government doesn't spend millions and billions of dollars a year promoting that. The authors also note the opt-out portion of No Child Left Behind and since fall semesters are starting -- parents have exactly six weeks after the fall semester starts to put in writing that the US military is not to be provided with information about their children. This must be done at the start of each school year.

On A12 of today's New York Times, Sarah Arbuzzese reports on the huge drop in the number of African-Americans enlisting in the US military noting "the share of blacks among active-duty recruits declined to 13 percent in 2006 from 20 percent in 2001" and that the Army has seen the most dramatic decline (from 23% of the 2006 Army population to 13%), then the Marines (from 12% to 8%) and then the Navy and Air Forces. African-Americans have been opposed to the illegal war from the start in large numbers and Abruzzese notes that the most recent polling showed 83% of Afican-Americans say "the United States should have stayed out of Iraq." So counter-recruiting efforts are important and do have effects. Many veterans assist and lead those efforts and IVAW, again, will be launching a campaign next month.

Turning to Iraq, having already made clear (via the Sunni shut out of the alleged 'alliance') that the White House defined 'benchmarks' two and sixteen were out the window, Nouri al-Maliki made it even more clear that the Sunnis are not welcome in 'liberated' Iraq. KUNA reports that a list has been issued "of wanted people" which includes the names of those "currently involved in financing attacks against the MNF" according to the Interior Ministry's Abdel-Karim Khalaf who has the title "Lieutenant General". The Interior Ministry has long been accused of being run by thugs who are set upon driving Sunnis out but apparently they now have the means and capabilities to track down those "financing attacks" or, at least, to pretend they do in order to continue targeting Sunnis.

On the heels of US Senators Carl Levin and John Warner's announcement that the Iraqi prime minister's "last chance" had arrived, Bully Boy attempted a show stopping performance today by dusting off his Dark Lady lp, popped it on the turntable and sang along with Cher about just being "a Dixie girl who prays/ Some day she'll be a Delta queen/ Find a good man . . . " Possibly that was his way of entertaining the VFW? Speaking of the puppet of the occupation, Nouri al-Maliki, Bully Boy pronounced him "a good guy, a good man". But it wasn't all spangles and head tosses, Bully Boy also wanted to give a history lesson and, suffice to say, he's no Howard Zinn. Mangling every known fact to humanity, Bully Boy came off like a college student dependent upon the "gentleman's C" which, for the record, was how he got through college. As Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted today, Bully Boy's declaring withdrawal from Iraq will cause the violence that followed when the US withdrew from Vietnam -- violence in Camobia and Laos as well as Vietnam. On the issue of Cambodia, in a speech in June, John Pilger addressed Cambodia, "I've made a number of documentaries about Cambodia. The first was Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia. It describes the American bombing that provided the catalyst for the rise of Pol Pot. What Nixon and Kissinger had started, Pol Pot completed -- CIA files alone leave no doubt of that. . . . The [US] troops were withdrawn from Vietnam after four long years. And during that time the United States killed more people in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos with bombs than were killed in the preceding years. And that's what's happening in Iraq." There's Bully Boy's actual historical comparison -- the one he won't make. To read Pilger's speech click here for Dissident Voice, click here for Democracy Now! which offers it in audio, video and text. As Saul Landau (CounterPunch) has noted of the US and Cambodia, "Between March 1969 and May 1970, Kissinger ordered some 3,600 B 52 raids on Cambodia. Kissinger later lied to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee saying he had selected only 'unpopulated' areas of Cambodia for bombing. Somehow, between 600,000 to 800,000 civilians died in these 'unpopulated' areas. This carnage occurred before Pol Pot won power. . . . Kissinger's undeclared war against Cambodia also included overthrowing the government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk. A pro U.S. military coup produced an ineffective regime and subsequently led to the seizure of power by the Khmer Rouge." "Bush is rewriting history -- never his best subject," notes Matthew Rothschild (The Progressive) who also notes, "he's counting the victims of the Khmer Rouge, who came to power only after the U.S. ruined Cambodia. And he's not counting the three million people the U.S. killed in Southeast Asia during the war. Just as he's not counting the 70,000 to 700,000 civilian Iraqis his war has killed, or the one in ten who have been forced to leave their homes."

David Jackson and Matt Kelley (USA Today) cite Vietnam historian Stanley Karnow saying the "historical analogies . . . don't track" because "Vietnam was not a bunch of sectarian groups fighting each other. . . . Does he think we should have stayed in Vietnam?" "We" would not, of course, include Bully Boy who joined the National Guard to stay out of Vietnam and couldn't even complete his duties there. (Note, in the 90s, Bully Boy would make comments indicating he was against the US involvement in Vietnam. That may have been the closest he ever came to making sense.) Joe Allen (ISR) noted Stanley Karnow referring to the invasion of Laos as Tricky Dick and Crooked Hank (Kissinger)'s "drastic new initiative" to distract from losing to the North Vietnamese with Allen noting: "In February 1971, 150,000 South Vietnamese troops invaded Laos in an operation called Lam Son 719. The U.S. Air Force flew 8,000 ariel sorties in support of the invasion. They advanced about a dozen miles into Laos without much opposition, then they were hit with a major counteroffensive by five divisions of the North Vietnamese Army. It immediately became a major rout, with the South Vietnamese Army fleeing back to South Vietnam . . . The Laos debacle proved that even with U.S. air and logistical support, the South Vietnamese Army was a useless fighting force. There was a rapid disintegration of the U.S. position in Vietnam during the remaining two years of the war." (That's from part three of Joe Allen's Vietnam series, click here for part one and here for part two.) Matthew Davis (BBC) analyzes the false comparison and quotes "Iraq analyst at King's College, London" James Denselow: "This smacks of spin, a last throw of the dice designed to pre-empt the anti-war lobby and justify the US's continued presence. This is an issue of how America goes to war, and how it gets out of it. It is rare for a leader in a democracy to take a country into war, and to take the country out." Click here for Thom Shanker's laughable 'Bully Boy is right and look Council on Foreign Relations and a host of War Hawks say so!" And no link to The Nation because John Nichols is apparently representing the entire magazine and most of the timid left who refuse to call out the Vietnam nonsense (Nichols zooms in Korea. Way to go, we'll all go home and watch M*A*S*H!). This is how the Vietnam revisionary history took hold to begin with, people smart enough to know it needed calling out refusing to do so. (In fairness, Nichols is apparently the only working at the magazine today.) Check instead the piece by Ron Fullwoood (OpEdNews). Or The UnCapitalist Journal which notes, "Incapable of admitting utter catastrophe in waging a 21st Century war of aggression that has left the U.S. armed forces debilitated and incapable of effectively fighting even a single theater war against a real enemy, and unable to face up to the wreck visited upon the fiscal house of the nation by irresponsible tax cuts for the rich coupled with unending, uncontrolled costs of vaporous war against a stateless band of criminal maniacs, the President of the United States of America is about to go all the way back and blame Richard Milhouse Nixon for this miserable failure of a Presidency."

Though the puppet has made no known comment on Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia, Carol J. Williams (Los Angeles Times) reports he's spitting mad over talk that he needs to go declaring, "No one has the right to place timetables on the Iraq government. It was elected by its people." Setting the issue of the election aside, al-Maliki wasn't elected by the people and should have been tossed out in May of 2006 by the Iraq Constitution since he failed to meet the deadline to put together his cabinet (after missing it, for those who've forgotten, al-Maliki tossed out the Constitutional deadline and created his own deadline -- which he also missed). Paul Tait and Mohammad Zargham (Reuters) report that al-Maliki declared of US criticism (the reporters note it wasn't "clear if he was referring to Bush or [US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan] Crocker"), "These statements do not concern us a lot. We will find many around the world who will support us in our endeavour." Really? Because the puppet was whining (when the US Congress was speaking of withdrawal at the end of spring) that the US forces couldn't leave (though poll after poll demonstrates the Iraqi people want them to). The puppet who never met a conspiracy he couldn't latch on to also began seeing a plot caused by the trip he's currently on, "Those who make such statements are bothered by our visit to Syria. We will pay no attention. We care for our people and our constitution and can find friends elsewhere." "Our"? It's his trip. Is the "we" also al-Maliki speaking of himself in the plural form? While al-Maliki gives a performance to rival Mary Todd Lincoln, Robert H. Reid (AP) reports that members of Iraq's Parliament "lack the votes to replace him" (maybe not) and that the White House fears no one else "could do a better job". So Iraq's stuck with al-Maliki the way the Democratically controlled US Congress tries to stick the American people with Bully Boy? Further calling Reid's reporting skills into question, he cites War Hawk Kenny Pollack -- who's been so 'right' about everything from the start (that was sarcasm). Jonathan Steele (Guardian of London via ICH) observes of al-Maliki's outburst, "In one sense, the crisis only confirms what has been clear for months. Whoever sits in the Green Zone in nominal charge of Iraq's government has little power or authority beyond its walls. Bush's political project for Iraq looks more fragile than ever."

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

TOSSING OUT MORE CHICKEN SOP FOR THE SOUL BARACK OBAMA DECLARED TODAY, IN HIS SPEECH TO THE V.F.W., MANY PROMISES.

INSTEAD OF EXAMINING THEM OR ASKING WHERE HIS PLAN, FOR INSTANCE, TO IMPROVE THE WAIT TIME FOR VETERANS SEEKING HEALTH CARE, THE IDIOT AT THE NEW YORK TIMES, JEFF ZELENY DECIDES TO SLIME THE PEACE MOVEMENT.

JEFF ZELENY DOESN'T KNOW THE TRUTH FROM HIS IMPACTED COLON AND HE SMEARS THE PEACE MOVEMENT WITH A LIE WHICH WILL PROBABLY RESULT IN A RAISE AT THE PAPER THAT SOLD THE ILLEGAL WAR.

[BEFORE IT CHANGES, ZELENY: One of the biggest applause lines of his speech came when he pledged that during an Obama administration, veterans would not have to wait months  or years  for services at veterans hospitals. He also said it was wrong for anti-war activists to protest at military funerals, declaring: "It needs to stop."]

Starting with war resisters. Camilo Mejia served in Iraq, served in Iraq well after his contract ran out and, as a non-US citizen, the military couldn't extend his contract but they chose to pretend like they could. They also denied him CO status. He tells his story Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia in which was released in May. One story not in the book, because it just happened, is that he's just been elected the chair of Iraq Veterans Against the War board of directors.

Mejia tells Glanz, "There's a sort of revolution taking place in the streets. It's not being reported by the mainstream media, but we in the antiwar movement know what's going on. There is a rebellion going on in the ranks of the military that is not being reported."

John Stauber (CounterPunch) notes: "IVAW was founded in 2004 and today it is a rapidly growing grassroots, independent anti-war group with members active in 43 states and deployed on bases in Iraq. These rank and file soldiers are not partisans; they are Americans who have seen first hand the greatest political betrayal of our lifetime, the US attack on Iraq and the long occupation. Iraq Veterans Against the War are not the concoction of a liberal think tank or PR firm; they have very little funding; they are not avoiding criticism of Democrats; and they are not playing political games trying to bank-shot Democratic candidates into the White House and Congress in 2008. They are in open non-violent revolt against US foreign policy, criticizing politicians of all stripes who would exploit the war for political gain." If only the media -- big and small -- could do the same.

Yesterday, Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted the Project for Excellence in Journalism "study shows corporate news coverage of the Iraq war has dropped sharply in the last four months. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the Iraq war accounted for just fifteen percent of news coverage, down from twenty-two percent earlier this year. Network evening news coverage of the war went from forty-percent to nineteen percent. The Democratic and Republican presidential campaign emerged as the most-covered issue over the same period." The report, entitled "Campaign For President Takes Center Stage In Coverage," notes that during "the period from April through June of 2007 was that press coverage of the war in Iraq declined markedly. Together the three major storylines of the war -- the policy debate, events on the ground, and the impact on the U.S. homefront -- filled 15% of the total newshole in the quarter, a drop of roughly a third from the first three months of the year, when it filled 22%." And the report zooms in one period: "Attention to the Iraq war fell across all five media sectors in the second quarter. The bulk of the decline occurred after May 24, when Congress approved funding without including troop withdrawal timetables, a move widely viewed as a White House victory." So when the Democrats in Congress caved, the media followed the lead?

At Truthdig (audio and transcript) James Harris and Josh Scheer speak with Matthew Rothschild about his new book You Have No Rights and Harris brings up the executive order the Bully Boy issued last month noting "it said, basically, that if you protest or threaten what he calls 'stabilization efforts in Iraq,' your property can be seized and you can be detained. Were you are aware of that?" Rothschild: "I have the order in my hand. I was just writing something on the computer to update our website with something on that. Yeah. If you are -- in the mind of the secretary of the Treasury -- posing a significant risk of committing an act of violence -- you don't have to have committed an act of violence. If he thinks you are at risk of committing an act of violence in order to protest the policies of the Iraqi government or the Bush administration's policies to promote what it calls 'economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq,' then the secretary of the Treasury can put a freeze on all your assets. This is unbelievable. What Bush is trying to achieve her, by executive order, are things that he can't achieve legislatively. Someone's got to put a stop to this. Congress has got to put a stop to it because he is seizing all sorts of authoritarian powers right now by executive decree."

Starting with war resisters. This year has seen three war resisters publish their stories in book form. First up was Joshua Key's The Deserter's Tale which was followed in May by Camilo Mejia's Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia and then, this month, Aidan Delgado's The Sutras Of Abu Ghraib: Notes From A Conscientious Objector In Iraq. Susan L. Rife (Sarasota Herald-Tribune) reports on Delgado who will "speak at various book-related events in Florida in September and October". Delgado explains, "As a child, I always thought of myself as a writer, always wanted to be a writer. . . . I encountered a lot of writer's block. So I would write whatever section seemed the most immediate to me, then once I had a bunch of little modules or sections, I'd write them together." Delgado is a reader (which always helps when writing a book). In a book discussion at The Third Estate Sunday Review, Mike noted that Delgado's "descriptions really make it come alive and he's a really strong writer," with Rebecca offering, "I think the book is a more 'You are there' approach than a reflection," while Cedric focused on the way Delgado captured his religious awakening in Iraq and Elaine comparing his writing style favorably to Lillian Hellman's noting, "He has a very good eye for physical detail but he also is very strong in zooming in on the telling incident." Rife writes, "The son of an American diplomat who had spent his childhood in Thailand, Senegal and Egypt, the former New College of Florida student was deployed to Iraq as a mechanic with the 320th Military Police in Nasiriyah and at the prison in Abu Ghraib. Outraged by treatment of Iraqi prisoners and prejudice against civilians, he filed for conscientious objector status." According to the Taguba Report, the US Army Criminal Investigation Command into the crimes at Abu Ghraib began in May 2003. As Delgado recounts on page 184-185, as late as January 2004, a commander was telling people to destroy evidence:

The first sergeant calls us to attention and then turns the formation over to the commander. The captain dispenses with the military formality and begins to rant at us immediately.

"I just came back from Brigade Headquarters with all the other company commanders, where General Karpinski chewed our asses about all these g**damn rumors going around! You all need to stamp this talk out! Immediately. Apparently there's word going around that some MPs were doing some things they weren't supposed to be doing and somebody took pictures of it all. You don't need to be writing about this to your families, you don't need to be telling them on the phone, and you don't need to be talking about it to each other. You better stop spreading these g**damn rumors!"

The commander pauses for a moment and then switches tactics, becoming suddenly congenial and chummy, "Look, we're all a family here. We don't air our dirty laundry in public. If we have a problem within the military, then we'll handle it internally. We don't need to let the media and the civilians into our business. If you have photos that you're not supposed to have, get rid of them. Don't talk about this to anyone, don't write about it to anyone back home. We're a family and we're going to handle this like a family. I don't want to hear any more of this kind of talk in my unit. You all just focus on going home in March, hoo-ah!"

Hoo-ah, we responded. The commander rambles on for a bit and then dismisses us. As I leave, I wonder what could have possibly gotten the entire base so worked up. There's no doubt now that everything we've heard about is true, and it must be even worse than we thought, for the commander himself to get on our backs about it. All a family? I laugh. We're only a family when the captain wants us to do his bidding or conceal some wrongdoing. The Army has tried that rhetoric before, talking about family and Army pride and everything else to try to get you to buy into what they do. When the Army talks about "handling something internally," it's only because they've done something so obviously wrong, they can't allow the rest of the country to see it. This doesn't surprise me. After all, if Americans back home saw Iraqi prisoners shot dead for throwing stones, saw the wretched conditions inside Abu, or saw the way the MPs dealt with the prisoners, what would they think of our glorious and righteous invasion? The truth about Abu Ghraib has to be concealed, has to be "kept in the family," because if the average citizen saw what we're doing to the people here, they would know in their guts that it's un-American.

Veterans for Peace concluded their conference in St. Louis Sunday (it ran from August 15 through the 19th). It was their 22nd annual conference. They note that the "temperature was hot (100 degrees), the worshops were hot, the speakers were hot, and IVAW was hot!" Tim Townsend (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) reported on Dennis Kucinich's strong reception Friday noting that Kucinich declared "the U.S. Congress should force the Bush administration to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq. But he also brought the crowd to its feet multiple times with a passionate delivery of his positions." AFP notes that Kucinich declared, "The Democratic leadership of the House and the Senate must finally live up to their responsibility and the promise they made to voters last year to end this war." This was followed with, "It doesn't take legislation, it simply requires a refusal to approve any additional funds and to use the $97 billion recently appropriated to bring our troops home as quickly as possible."

Earlier in the conference (Wednesday), Bud Deraps, WWII vet, spoke about Depleted Uranium: "We have learned that DU was first used in our 1991 Gulf War and that inhalation is the major cause of DU contamination. It has long been believed that it takes ten years or more for lung cancer to form from smoking. The NY Sun reported in an Aug. 6, 2007 article that there are increasing cancer cases being found in US troops that have served in the Gulf for as few as 2 to 3 years. For example, 40 year old Army chaplain Fran Sturart served in Iraq for a year after Mar. 2003. In Mar. 2006, she had a rare form of ovary germ cell cancer seen only before in teenage girls. Army Sgt. Lauderdale went to Kuwait in Jan. 2005. By the end of Mar. they found he had Stage 2 cell cancer of the mouth and tongue. Taken to Walter Reed on April 1, a doctor there said he had seen a 21 year old just back from Iraq with a similar cancer. Lauderdale, 59, died at Reed on July 14, 2006, a year and a half after arriving in Kuwait. Currently, the State Dept. Web says the US military cites four separate studies by NATO, the Rand Corp., the European Commission and the World Health Org - that found NO evidence of adverse health effects from Depleted Uranium! It is reported that we used over 320 tons of DU weapons in the brief Gulf War and over 2000 tons in the years 2003 and 04 alone. Massive bombings continue to this day. The Iraq environment minister confirms 350 sites DU contaminated by heavy bombing, saturating much of that destroyed nation. Frequent sand storms, helicopter take-offs and landings carry the deadly dust size ceramic particles aloft where they are being spread far and wide. Counting the Gulf and our present wars, we have had well over a million troops, contract and government workers cycle in and out of the region, many on their 4th tour, all possibly DU contaminated."

Larry Ingram (Collinsville Herald) reported last week on Roland James and Lane Anderson who made the decision to travel to the conference via bicycles and to do some from the Vietnam Veterans Against the war convention in Chicago because they trace the illegal war to the US "dependence on Persian Gulf oil". Zhanda Malone (Edwardsville Intelligencer) notes Anderson "handed out index cards" throughout the journey of "Things we can all do to prevent wars for oil" which "included drink needed liquid from the tap, not bottled water, drive and accelerate slower, walk and bike whenever possible; carpool to school and work; resist impulse buying; share, repair and care for power equipment; use manual tools; and grow food at home."

On Saturday, Julian E. Barnes and Carol J. Williams (Los Angeles Times) reported that Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno declared that Bully Boy will need to change strategy or "the elevated U.S. troop levels in Iraq will continue until this time next year". That would mean, if Odierno is correct, any departures would come in August 2008, just in time for the GOP national convention. The numbers being tossed around for drawbacks (not withdrawal) would leave approximately 140,000 US forces in Iraq which is higher than the pre-escalation total present at the start of this year. Also on Saturday, Steven Lee Myers and Thom Shanker (New York Times) reported on the White House's intentions regarding the September 15th reports to Congress (Petraeus and Crocker) which is to use the reports to resell the illegal war all over again and cited unnamed White House officials including one who "made it clear that the goal of the planned annoucement was to counter public pressure for a more rpaid reduction and to try to win support for a plan that could keep American involvement in Iraq on 'a sustainable footing' at least through the end of the Bush presidency." On Sunday, the BBC reported UK General Richard Dannatt declaring that "the government has overstretched our armed forces" but, for some reason. Sarah Baxter and Michael Smith (Sunday Times of London) explained that Stephen Biddle, "military advisor to President George W Bush," that the British departure from Iraq will lead to "a number of British casualties" and the reporters note this is in keeping "with British military estimates that withdrawal could cost the lives of 10 to 15 soldiers." Tim Shipman (Telegraph of London) reported that British officers are listened to far less now by "America's top commanders" and quoted one "senior US officer familiar with Gen Petraues's thinking" summarizing it: "The short version is that the Brits have lost Basra, if indeed they ever had it. Britain is in a difficult spot because of the lack of political support at home, but for a long time -- more than a year -- they have not been engaged in Basra and have tried to avoid casualties. They did not have enough troops there even before they started cutting back. The situation is beyond their control." And, along with British troops being stretched, Lolita C. Baldor (AP) reported that "the [US] Army has nearly exhausted its fighting force and its options if the Bush administration decided to extend the Iraq buildup beyond next spring."

On Sunday, the New York Times ran a piece written by seven active duty service members entitled "Iraq As We See It" (click here for Common Dreams, click here for International Herald Tribune -- available in full at both without registration) which noted "Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricty, telephone services and sanitation. 'Lucky' Iraqis live in communities barricaded with concrete walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal. In an environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. . . . In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are -- an army of occupation -- and force our withdrawal." The piece is signed by US Army specialist Buddhika Jayamaha, Sgt. Wesley D. Smith, Sgt. Jeremy Roebuck, Sgt. Omar Mora, Sgt. Edward Sandmeier, Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray, Staff Sgt. and Jeremy A. Murphy.

Of course the Iraqis have been clear, in poll after poll, about wanting ALL foreign troops out of their country. The puppet of the occupation, Nouri al-Maliki, is among the roadblocks. At Inside Iraq (McClatchy Newspapers), an Iraqi correspondent notes the puppet's claims that Iraq is now sovereign by describing Sadoon Street in Baghdad "Anyway whoever controls Sadoon Street, its not the Iraqi government which means that our Prime Minister doesn't tell the truth which means that we are not really sovereign country. When a government can't control a street, its not a government, its only a group of puppets. When a government can't provide the minimum level of security, its just a shadow, when a government take the instruction from other places than its country, its just a shadow. Its time to get rid of all the Iraqi puppets in the Green Zone and start searching for real Iraqi" leadership.